STOCKTON - Predictions of lackluster turnout in Tuesday's primary election seemed to be coming true by early afternoon.

Polling places were up and running for the 7 a.m. start, and everything was running smoothly, Registrar of Voters Austin Erdman said.

Except for one thing.

"The problem is we're not seeing any voters," he said after the polls had been open for seven hours, but before the evening surge of after-work voters.

"I certainly don't want to say it's the lightest (turnout) we've ever had, but we certainly are headed in that direction."

The lowest turnout in the county was in 2006, when 31.21 percent of voters showed, he said. On Tuesday, Erdman was hypothesized turnout would fall between 25 percent and 30 percent.

Big races for the highest offices draw the most voters, starting with Election Day every four years when a president is elected. But this isn't a presidential year.

The statewide low for a non-presidential primary was 28 percent of registered voters in 2008, according to the California Secretary of State's Office. There was a separate primary for presidential candidates that year. The statewide high was 69 percent in 1978.

The first county vote tally released soon after polls closed counted mailed-in ballots received before Tuesday. That number was about 37,000, or about 12.5 percent of the county's registered voters.

Counting will continue, and the final tally won't be official for weeks.

Mail ballots received Tuesday and provisional ballots still need to be counted.

Even for seats that won't be filled until November, the stakes were high for candidates eliminated from the running after the Tuesday vote. Stockton City Council seats won't be decided until November. But some hotly contested county races were set to end in June.

Those voters who did make it to one of the county's 416 polling places Tuesday might have noticed some differences. New this year are posters in five languages at each station to give voters who might be better speakers of another language the ability to better understand their ballots.

Behind the scenes, the Registrar of Voters is using new equipment that would be put in wider use when the state moves to same-day registration sometime in the future, Erdman said. Ballots can now be printed on demand. On Tuesday, by early afternoon, machines were used to print out Spanish-language ballots for one polling place that felt it was running low, Erdman said.

St. Francis of Asissi Anglican Church in Stockton did have a steady stream of voters in the early evening. Poll workers said voters had been coming in at an even pace all day.

Like many of the voters leaving the polling place, Doris Grilliot, 73, said she votes every election. "I feel that the ones who are complaining aren't the ones considering the issues at hand ... or trying to change things," she said. Or voting, she said in the warm, mild evening.

"They can't say the weather was too bad."

Contact reporter Zachary K. Johnson at (209) 546-8258 or zjohnson@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/johnsonblog and on Twitter @zacharykjohnson.